


The Possibly Slightly True Story

by padfoots_prose



Category: Glee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 12:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4564668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/padfoots_prose/pseuds/padfoots_prose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Possibly Slightly True Story of Jasper Sebastian Edwin Smythe. In which Sebastian Smythe is 98th in line for the British Royal Throne, only sometimes a douche, crushing on a guy other than Blaine, and actually kind of nervous about his first day at Dalton.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Possibly Slightly True Story

Jasper Sebastian Edwin Smythe was, if anyone cared to count, 98th in line for the English Royal throne. Which was not a huge deal, given that his older brother was 97th in line, and Sebastian would rather die himself than let anything happen to Thomas Henry William Smythe the Second. Hence, it was with very little fanfare that the younger of the Smythe brothers had been enrolled at Dalton Academy, assigned an innocuous locker in the corridor opposite the Junior commons, and left more or less to his own devices on his first day at his new high school.

Which is precisely why Jasper Sebastian Edwin Smythe (affectionately known as Sebastian), found himself standing before the aforementioned locker, squinting down at his combination, scribbled in the corner of his timetable, as he twirled the dial, wondering vaguely whether or not he should be worried that his third period Spanish class appeared to be taking place in the gym. The lock clicked and the locker sprang open, a little more aggressively than the slightly better-behaved lockers at his old school in London had done, but with what Sebastian liked to think of as vivacious energy, rather than intent to cause harm.

"Hey, I think you dropped something."

Sebastian jumped at the feel of someone tapping his shoulder, turning to face the dark-haired, bespectacled boy who stood behind him. The boy straightened and held out a small piece of paper that he had evidently just picked up from the ground.

Out of instinct, Sebastian took to the paper, glancing quickly at it and noticing the unfamiliar handwriting.

"No," he began, "this isn't mine-" But the boy had already hurried away, swept by the vast crowd of navy blazers.

With a heavy sigh, Sebastian leant forward, resting his forehead against the wooden shelf inside his locker. His thoughts drifted to the draughty halls and prim and proper ways of his school back home. Sure, Dalton was as close to an upper-class European education as you could get in Ohio, but it still wasn't the same. It still wasn't home.

Shoving the piece of paper in his pocket, Sebastian shook the thought from his head, grabbing his books and following the current of the people (and the helpful signs) towards his homeroom.

Inside, a sea of unfamiliar faces stared up at Sebastian as he entered, ducking his head and moving quickly to a desk near the back. Most of the curious gazes fell as it became painful to crane necks and twist in chairs, but even by the time he'd re-packed his book bag twice, Sebastian could still feel people staring.

The person sitting beside him gave his bag an (affectionate?) kick, accompanied by a confident, "Hello again, new kid."

Sebastian looked up to see the boy from the hallway before.

"Hi," he replied nervously, hoping his accent wouldn't show.

"Are you British? German? Italian? French? Persian?" the boy asked loudly, not bothering to wait for an answer before he barrelled on. "Because you have an accent, and I have an uncle who's Welsh, I think. From, like, Wales... or New South Wales... or Wisconsin... or Winnipeg... or something."

"Oh," Sebastian responded.

The boy seemed unfazed.

"I s'pose it doesn't really matter which place, right? I mean, what's the difference, really?"

That, Sebastian reasoned, simply didn't warrant an answer at all.

"What was on that note before, the one from your locker?"

Automatically, Sebastian's hand leapt to his pocket, and he quickly pulled out the scrap of paper, handing it back over to the boy.

"I don't know what's on it," he explained as he eagerly exploited the one mutual subject of interest between him and this talkative stranger. "I think it must have been in the locker before I was assigned it. Probably belonged to whoever had that locker prior to me."

"Huh..." the corridor boy had smoothed out the note and laid it on his desk, where they both leant over to read what it said.

"' _Want to get ice cream after school? – Blaine_ '," Sebastian recited. He looked up at his companion. "Who's Blaine?"

The boy frowned, obviously thinking hard, then eventually shrugged.

"No idea," he admitted, "But maybe someone else knows, hang on-"

Sebastian looked around in confusion as the boy noisily cleared his throat, then yelled, "Anyone know a guy called 'Blaine'?"

"Blaine Anderson?" Another boy offered. "He was the Warblers' soloist, remember? Went out with that Kurt kid last year."

A few choruses of, "Oh yeah, that guy" sounded around the room.

Sebastian's next-desk neighbour turned back to him, shrugging as if to say, 'there's your answer'.

"Why d'you ask?" the boy who'd identified Blaine questioned, glancing between Sebastian and his companion.

"We found this note," the companion said, waving the scrap of paper carelessly. "And it says-" he broke off, squinting at the wonky writing.

"' _Want_   _to- to_ _get_   _ice_ \- um... I...  _ice_   _cream after school? '_ ," Sebastian tried to recite, forgetting words a little in the middle.

"Wait- what?" The boy raised his eyebrows incredulously, "'Want to go scream after school' – that's seriously what it says?"

"No," Sebastian shook his head emphatically, trying to repeat the note again.

He was simply met with a quizzical stare and a mutter of, "That's exactly what I _said_."

Needless to say, Sebastian was glad when the bell rang loudly and the teacher at the front waved for the class to leave.

"See you later," the corridor companion said with a wave.

Sebastian smiled back and, with a glance at his timetable and a deep breath, set out for Physics.

Thankfully, the Physics room wasn't too difficult to find, which made sense given that it was in the labs, and the labs were all in the same area, down in the dungeons beneath the school. Sebastian couldn't help but be reminded of his old school, where a legendary fire in the labs in '03 (which had most certainly not been entirely his brother's fault, at least according to the official investigation) had burned them to the ground.

Entering the room, Sebastian was disappointed to see very few familiar faces, and the only spark of recognition he felt was catching sight of the boy who'd talked to him about Blaine in homeroom. Unfortunately, he already he had a partner beside him at the bench, and so Sebastian headed to an empty bench a couple of rows back, smiling at the short, slightly chubby boy who joined him shortly after he'd pulled his book from his bag.

"No prac today!" came a sing-song voice from the doorway, and the class badly muffled a collective groan as a short, stubby, rat-faced man entered the room, dropping a disproportionately large pile of books onto the teacher's desk, given that the class only included about a dozen people.

"Your regular teacher is away today and left me no instructions of what work I should set you, so I've taken it upon myself to get you up-to-date with the curriculum, which you seem to have fallen alarmingly far behind in. We'll be reading pages seventy-three through to one hundred and four," the teacher informed the class merrily, seeming to gain more energy and a wider, more vindictive smile at every suppressed noise of dissent. "Please come up and take a book, and read in silence for the rest of the lesson."

Sebastian spent roughly half an hour thoroughly unabsorbed in Newton's Laws of Motion before chancing a glance around the room. He took in the teacher's sharp, bitter stare and the unmistakable hiss of a whisper two rows forward, where boy-who-knew-who-Blaine-was was talking to his friend. Then, beside him, Sebastian's lab-partner let out a shockingly loud snore, and the entire class turned to look as the chubby boy settled more comfortably onto his folded arms, dozing contentedly in the pleasant cool of the laboratory.

"What was that?" the teacher snapped, standing and leering at the class.

Sebastian noted that the spectacle would be much more effective if the teacher were tall enough to actually be properly visible over the tray of beakers and conical flasks that dominated his desk.

"Nothing, sir," the class chanted back, only one boy slipping and casting a quick glance at Sebastian's sleeping friend.

The teacher noticed the glance and in an instant had surged forward, rounding his desk and approaching the partner of boy-who-knew-who-Blaine-was.

"What were you looking at, Stevenson?" the teacher barked.

"Nothing, sir," the boy answered quickly, staring hard at his desk.

"Wrong answer! You should be looking at your book. You should all be looking at your books! Just wait until I tell Professor Meller about this, he'll keep you back after class, make you wash test-tubes with toothbrushes and clean motors with toothpicks, just like back in the old days where..." and so the muttering continued as he moved back to his desk.

The room was silent for a minute, until the unmistakable sound of another snore was muffled by a harsh cough from boy-who-knew-who-Blaine-was. The teacher looked up but didn't make a scene this time, and boy-who-knew-who-Blaine-was shot a quick grin back at Sebastian.

As it happened though, Sebastian's lab-partner was not the one who ended up in trouble. As the lesson began to wind down in its last ten minutes, boy-who-knew-who-Blaine-was leant over to whisper something to his friend. But his timing was wrong and he'd neglected to check that the teacher was distracted, and instantly he was leapt upon like a baby gazelle assaulted by a lion.

"What do you think you're doing?" The teacher cried, making the whole class jump in their seats and one boy let out a scream in shock. "Talking in class! Undermining my authority! Disrespecting your fellow classmates! Tell me, what was so important for you to share it with Stevenson? What piece of news was so vital that it simply couldn't wait for another, more appropriate, moment to be imparted? Come now, stand and tell the whole class."

Sebastian was impressed at the courage of the boy who stood up with a casual confidence, towering over the teacher, whom he shot a snarky look at before turning around to face the class.

"I was just telling Stevenson about what a shame it is he never agreed to go out with Blaine Anderson. The new kid-" he waved a hand at Sebastian, who ducked his head when a few curious eyes turned briefly on him "-found a note in Kurt's old locker. Apparently, Anderson knows how to make a guy  _scream_."

The final word was said so obscenely that the teacher was practically beside himself with his own flustered orders of, "Principal's office! Now! I will not have such language in my classroom!"

"What language?" the boy teased, clearly already resigned to his fate. "I'm speaking English, just like the rest of us, right, new kid?"

Sebastian tried to shrink lower into his chair, but the teacher had already noticed him, and a manic gleam was in his eyes as he spluttered out an order for Sebastian Smythe to accompany Anthony Hughes to the Principal's office  _right now_! Anthony shrugged and walked over to the door, holding it open for Sebastian.

"My parents are going to kill me," Sebastian muttered as he brushed past.

"Don't worry," Anthony assured him, carefully closing the door behind him before he spoke. "No one takes old Grouchy Grint seriously. The principal's sick to death of having us sent to him all the time when all we do is talk back a little. He knows we're harmless. Grint's just an..." he seemed to be searching for the right word.

"...ass?" Sebastian suggested.

Anthony grinned at him, "Yeah, that'll do nicely."

The boys continued chatting comfortably as Anthony led them around a right turn and up two sets of stairs, until they came to a small foyer outside a closed door baring a golden plate carved with 'Principal's Office'. Two chairs sat in the room, neither occupied. Sebastian was about to sit down when the door opened and a dark-skinned boy walked out, nodding emphatically.

"I understand completely, sir," the boy said. "No, don't worry about it. I'll call my parents tonight and mail them the new conditions of the scholarship. I'm sure they'll understand."

He was about to close the door when he noticed Sebastian and Anthony in the foyer, the latter grinning widely at him.

"What did you do this time?" the boy asked, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

"I didn't do anything, David. At least, nothing too bad," Anthony shrugged. "Just told Mr Grint where he could shove his physics books."

The boy – David – laughed, then poked his head back into the Principal's office.

"Anthony Hughes is here to see you again," he said, and Sebastian smiled at the sound of the Headmaster's exasperated groan.

"Again?" he asked rhetorically, then louder, "Come on in, Mr Hughes."

"On my way, Laurence! Mr Principal. Whatever I'm supposed to call you..." Anthony stood, turning to Sebastian. "We're tight, Laurence and I. We meet up a lot," he explained, then raised his eyebrows, "Coming?" he asked. Sebastian shrugged and followed him to the door.

"An accomplice?" David inquired, backing out of the way and catching sight of Sebastian.

"Unfortunately, no. Just an innocent bystander. Sebastian something – he's new," Anthony shot him another grin.

"Just Sebastian," Sebastian corrected, holding out his hand to shake.

David took it, nodding politely. "I'm David," he introduced himself. "Senior. I'll take you back to your class if you want. Mr Grint won't care if you've actually seen the Principal or not. He just likes to abuse his power."

Sebastian chuckled slightly, shooting a glance back at Anthony, who was still grinning widely, clearly completely at ease as the door to the Headmaster's office swung closed behind him.

"Good to know," Sebastian said, "And it's nice to meet you, David. I'm a Junior."

Sebastian hoped he didn't seem too eager, but he liked the idea of having a conversation with someone who (hopefully) wasn't on first name terms with the Principal.

"Enjoying Dalton?" David asked. Then, before Sebastian had a chance to answer, "Do you sing?"

"Yes."

"Dance?"

"A little."

"Harmonise?"

"No. I mean, never before. I mostly just sing in the shower and stuff."

"That's a shame," David said, and he truly sounded sorry. "If you could get some harmonies down, you know, learn to work with the group a bit, we could really use you in the Warblers. We need a new guy now that Blaine's gone."

Sebastian's eyebrows lowered at the mention of the name. Considering he'd never met him, this Blaine fellow seemed to be coming up an awful lot in conversation.

"Blaine," Sebastian repeated then, almost unconsciously, "Anthony got sent out of Physics for saying something about him."

David looked down at Sebastian, eyebrows raised. "Anthony said something about Blaine? I don't think the two guys have ever spoken. Blaine's always too busy being his dreamy, singing - singing dreamily, by the way, not looking dreamy, he's not my type... well, _guy_ is not my type - self to get mixed up with kids like Anthony Hughes. What did Anthony say about him?"

Sebastian shrugged, rolling his eyes. "It was stupid, really. I found this note in my locker this morning, something about ice cream. But Anthony misheard, I think, and he thought it was about screaming. And then our teacher today – Mr Grint? – he got Anthony in trouble for talking and asked him to say whatever he was talking about to the whole class, so Anthony said that Blaine... that he knew how to make guys scream. Or something."

David's eyebrows had been slowly rising throughout Sebastian's explanation, and by the end they were in danger of disappearing over the top of his head.

"Blaine knows how to 'make guys scream'?" he repeated, sounding incredulous.

"That's what he said."

Letting out a shout of laughter, then doubling over to clutch his stomach and laughing harder, David wordlessly pointed at a door, which Sebastian realised was the entrance to his Physics room.

"Thanks for showing me the way back here," he said, just as the bell rang.

"No problem," David replied, choking slightly, still laughing. "Completely worth it. I think you just told me the funniest thing I've heard in years."

As Sebastian ducked inside, dodging the beady eyes of Mr Grint and heading straight for his abandoned bench, he could hear David outside, still laughing noisily. Grabbing his own books, Sebastian paused beside Anthony's desk, considering the pile there. With one last glare, the teacher exited the room, leaving the door gaping open, so Sebastian put down his books and began to re-arrange the pile to make space for Anthony's books in his bag.

Outside, it sounded like David was recovering, and his loud voice carried into the room as he yelled, "Hey, Thad! Nick! Come over here, you've got to hear this!"

Still trying to organise two sets of books into one book bag, Sebastian listened as David relayed the story of Blaine making guys scream to Thad and Nick, who were as yet only identifiable by their voices. All three boys seemed to find the story exceptionally amusing, and Sebastian began to wonder what could perhaps be so incredibly unappealing about Blaine that it made his fellow students – friends? – gain so much amusement from his apparent sexual prowess.

Maybe he was hideously ugly. Maybe he was a devout Christian. Maybe they'd glanced at him in the locker room and he was absolutely nothing special. Or maybe something super-weird was going on with his junk and they'd never before suspected that it could possibly be a good thing, but clearly it was and now they'd have to all re-adjust their opinions of it and-

Sebastian stopped his thoughts with a shake of his head. Now was not the time to be thinking this hard about another guy's junk. In fact, there was never really a good time to do that. Except, he supposed, now he was at Dalton. Zero tolerance. His thoughts jumped briefly to Anthony Hughes's wide, carefree – flirtatious? – grin. Well, it was better than thinking about Blaine's junk, that's for sure.

Picking up his over-stuffed bag, Sebastian hurried to the door, pulling his timetable out of his pocket to find his next class.  _Latin, Room 305_. Easy subject, impossible-to-find room.

The sound of David and his friends departing echoed from not far away. Reluctantly feeling in need of their help, Sebastian followed the noise, catching up as they rounded a corner.

He could hear them more clearly now that he was close, and hung back for a moment, waiting for a chance to interrupt and ask for directions.

"Blaine Anderson: sex tyrant," the taller of David's two friends announced to appreciative laughter.

"No, Thad, I've got a better one," the other boy, apparently Nick, said. "I mean, Blaine's no tyrant, right? He's classier than that. So I'm going with Blaine Anderson: sex on a stick."

Thad snorted, all sense of decorum forgotten.

"Um, excuse me?" Sebastian called quickly, before they could keep talking. "Do you know how to get to Room 305?"

Nick, David and Thad exchanged glances.

"Come on, new kid, we'll show you the way," David said. "But I want something in return."

Sebastian looked at him with a frown.

"Audition for the Warblers. Just so we can see what you've got."

A pause.

"Fine," Sebastian relented, smiling as the three boys exchanged grins. "But first, tell me something. I want to know more about this Blaine guy."


End file.
